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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27644462">inside burn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fauxtales/pseuds/fauxtales'>fauxtales</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Becoming Human Again [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Recovery, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Xigber/Braig is/was a creep, but Isa and Lea are recovering, implied PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:36:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,173</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27644462</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fauxtales/pseuds/fauxtales</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lea finds an old pack of cigarettes. If only he could throw them out, along with all the memories of why he started smoking in the first place. Equally as hard is talking with Isa about their shared abuse at the hands of the same man. But then, recovery has never been easy.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Becoming Human Again [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890835</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>inside burn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please take note of the tags. Most of this is a discussion between two people in recovery about their abuse and although the exact details of that abuse is not described, it's still pretty clear. Take care of yourself.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lea stares across the Twilight Town skyline. The eternal sunset that is the brightest it ever seems to get in this world is slowly sinking below the horizon, casting the city into the dark of night. Lights are twinkling from the windows of the world’s residents, the artificial attempts at warding off the things that live in the darkness, the seemingly universal instinct of humans to be wary of the dark shining through even when they don’t know just how right that fear is. Regardless of the reason, the city begins to look like a mirror of the starlit sky, brighter all the more for the way the real stars fade in the light pollution. Lea takes a drag of the cigarette between his lips and breathes out smoke, blurring his view of the lights.</p>
<p>It’s a beautiful night. It reminds Lea of sitting on top of the clocktower after a job well done, hiding in this quiet world in an attempt to escape his responsibilities to Saïx. A task easier said than done, when the man lived in the back of Axel’s head, berating him constantly. That wasn’t the only thing Axel was trying to escape back then - his coworkers were annoying at their best and the Castle That Never Was could feel too big and too small all at once - but Lea has nothing like that to escape now. Nothing but his thoughts and he gave up on that a long time ago.</p>
<p>Time runs differently in other worlds, but Lea has to wonder if it is night in Radiant Garden as well. If it is, are any of his other fellow ex-cult members staring up at the stars in the sky? Do they wonder about what the others are doing? Do they look up at the sky and see all those lights, dimmed as they are by the light on their world, and marvel at how large the World is. There are so many other worlds that they have never seen. Even with all the places they invaded and threw into chaos, there were just as many more out there that have never been touched by a person from somewhere else. It makes Lea feel so small. He finds he can’t exactly hate the feeling.</p>
<p>“I thought you quit.” </p>
<p>The low voice pulls Lea from his thoughts. He looks over his shoulder from where he stands, leaning against the railing of their tiny balcony, to spot Isa in the doorway. For a moment, he  feels like he’s been caught doing something bad - the urge to throw some sort of sarcastic comment to cover up his misdeed is very strong - but then he releases the smoke he didn’t realize he was holding in his lungs and lets out a small bitter laugh instead.</p>
<p>“I did.” Lea looks down at the stick in his hand. He looks it over, half burned and mostly ash, crumpled a bit where he’s been holding it tighter than really needed, the glow of the burning end just a bit too bright to be natural. Lea has always gone through these faster than he should. “I was going through some of the boxes recovered from Radiant Garden and found an old pack.” Lea holds up the pack in question, giving it a little shake. “Impressively resilient, to survive being dropped into the darkness like that. I guess old habits die harder than I thought.”</p>
<p>While Lea is talking, Isa steps out onto the balcony. He leans against the railing next to Lea, close enough for their shoulders to brush. The air between them is warm. Lea does his best not to set his own hair on fire as he takes another drag. “Yknow, when you first started smoking, it surprised me.”</p>
<p>“Really?” Lea glances at Isa out of the corner of his eye. The shorter man isn’t looking at him, instead staring out at the city as Lea had been. “Why’s that?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. At the time, you didn’t seem like that type, I guess.” Isa shrugs. There’s a slight smile on his lips, something distant and nostalgic. Lea wants to press his fingers to it, trace the shape of it so he’ll never forget the way it looks on Isa’s face. “It was after we became apprentices, when you started trailing around behind Xig- Braig. And Dilan and Aeleus too. I thought, for whatever reason, that you were too worried about your health to pick up such a habit.”</p>
<p>Lea doesn’t miss the falter over Braig’s name. Isa has struggled greatly with separating out some of the Organization from their human counterparts. Not that they are truly different people; as Nobodies they were all just missing a fragment of their self, which certainly led them to doing awful things, but it would be an oversimplification to call them “different people.” Even so, Lea can’t quite think of himself as Axel. He thought so differently then, his goals framed in such a way as to be near unrecognizable to him now. Besides, he started seeing what a mess they were like that early on. He had begun to develop his heart again.</p>
<p>Saïx, on the other hand, was firm in his ways. Not to mention the fact that he had part of Xehanort within him for long enough that his entire being was altered. Even now, Isa worries that he is still that person, feels the remnants of Saïx and Xehanort within him as if they might explode out of his chest and drag him back to the cruelty he committed. What’s more, Saïx spent a lot of time with Xigbar, and the reality is that Xigbar was never all that different from Braig. Sure, he may have been a big more subdued the first few years, as they all were, but he bounced back from that quickly. Of all of them, Xigbar seemed to hold on to who he was the most.</p>
<p>“Yeah, well,” Lea says, rubbing at the back of his neck self consciously. “Braig seemed cool back then. He was an older guy, with real experience fighting and of the world and I… well. I was an impressionable teenager who thought I might be able to get some good tips or something if I got closer to him. Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Lea takes another drag as he tries to gather his thoughts around Braig. He can’t blame Isa for thinking of Xigbar instead of the person he was back then, considering how close Saïx unwittingly became to Xigbar. Unwillingly, really, beyond the desire to get closer to Xemnas. Lea doesn’t know everything that happened between Saïx and Xigbar, and if he’s honest, he’s scared to ask.</p>
<p>“I suppose that makes sense,” Isa says, glancing over at Lea. His expression is searching, as if he’s trying to find more answers in the gaps in Lea words. As if Lea is leaving something out. Maybe he is. “He didn’t pressure you into it, did he?”</p>
<p>Lea chokes on his next inhale. He pounds on his chest as he coughs, trying to ignore the heat on his face at that question. It’s a perfectly reasonable one, but somehow Lea is sure Isa isn’t just talking about smoking. There’s that worried undercurrent to his voice, the implication behind his words that Braig overstepped a boundary that a teenage Lea would have been quick enough to ignore. He has always been reckless like that.</p>
<p>“No,” Lea gasps, getting his breath back. It’s a knee jerk response, simpler than the truth of the matter, but Lea doesn’t like to think about it. “I… I asked. You know how I was back then, too curious for my own good and wanting to jump right into anything. I thought I was so strong and mature, close enough to an adult at seventeen to do whatever I wanted.” Isa shifts closer, pressing against Lea’s side. Lea finds himself pressing back, leaning his head against Isa’s. “One day, Braig was on his smoke break or something, out in the courtyard. I was supposed to be somewhere else I’m sure, running an errand for Even or something. I went up to him and asked for a smoke, as if I knew exactly what I was doing. I really was such an idiot back then.”</p>
<p>“You’re an idiot now too,” Isa cuts in. The smile in his voice is evident, and the way he loops his arm through Lea’s is comforting. Lea laughs, his voice only cracking a little bit.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Lea turns his head in to press a kiss to Isa’s hair, breathing in the smell of him. “I’m still hanging around you, after all.”</p>
<p>“I think that makes me the idiot for letting you stick around, actually.”</p>
<p>“Hah, probably.”</p>
<p>For long minutes, they stay like that. Lea lets the quiet of the night swallow the words that he could say, the rest of the story about how he got his addiction. About how the smoke first curling in his lungs was a burn that he instantly felt at home in, how the fire in his veins sparked in that moment. About the way Braig watched him, his eyes trained on Lea with a sharpness that makes him squirm to think about. Back then, he thought that was a good feeling. Exhilarating. Now, it just makes him want to puke.</p>
<p>“He never pressured me either, you know.” Lea looks down at Isa when he talks, confused at first. Isa was never close to Braig when they were young - but then Saïx was forced closer to Xigbar and Lea sighs. “Xigbar, I mean. He was a creep, to be sure, but I’m the one who was trying to climb the ladder. Anything he might have done, I was the one who suggested it.”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t make it right,” Lea points out quietly. Of all his mistakes when he was younger, that’s one thing that he’s learned. Xigbar, Braig, no matter who he was at the time, he would take advantage of anything he could. “We were so young and he knew that.”</p>
<p>“I know. I hated the way he looked so closely at you,” Isa says, shaking his head a bit. He continues, his voice barely above a whisper. “I thought he was going to find out if I didn’t find some way to direct his focus elsewhere. You seemed so open and I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t figure things out, so I-”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lea interrupts. He can hear the hitch in Isa’s voice, the way his words are working him up into a panic. Lea stubs the cigarette out on the balcony and turns to pull Isa closer to him. “Don’t push yourself.”</p>
<p>“...Right,” Isa mumbles into Lea’s chest. His arms come up to wrap around Lea’s waist, hugging him tightly. Lea thinks about the pack of cigarettes in his back pocket, about why he started smoking with such regularity. It was the stress, of being an apprentice, yes, but also of their own goals and… And Braig. There was always something off about him, about his interest in them, and Lea had turned to something quietly self destructive to cope, a burn that he would learn to live with for years.</p>
<p>Isa had his own sort of burn. It can still be seen in the scar on his face, in the anxious light in his eyes, in the way he needs the kitchen to remain organized and near spotless at any given time. Isa’s need for control manifested in Saïx becoming a controlling person, while Lea’s need for stability became Axel’s fire, burning everything around him to match the burning in his lungs. They handled their situations so differently, but still can’t seem to shake off the now useless ways they survived.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Lea whispers, pulling back to press a kiss to Isa’s forehead. “You wanna go watch a movie?”</p>
<p>Isa blinks up at him, dampness clinging to his lashes that Lea won’t bother to comment on. “That sounds nice.”</p>
<p>They are getting better though. Conversations like these are good, even if they are hard. Despite being stuck together the way they were, there is so much that happened to them that the other doesn’t yet know about. Maybe someday they’ll be ready to give all the details. Maybe someday Lea will be able to talk about it outside of metaphors and Isa will be able to say what he needs to without mentally going back to that place.</p>
<p>For now, Lea will shove the cigarettes to the back of his night stand drawer and try to forget they’re there. Isa will make them popcorn, reorganizing the cabinet that Lea put groceries in while he waits for the microwave. They’ll sit down to their movie and fall asleep halfway through, tangled up in each other and safe.</p>
<p>It may not be perfect, but recovery never is.</p>
<p>Lea is just glad for the safety of Isa’s arms again.</p>
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